Old Stuff

Take a minute to reflect on your writing assignment. What kind of expectations from your audience did you rely on that are similar to or dissimilar from things you expect when you casually read about topics that are interesting to you? Do your choices provide any insight to your identity as a writer? If so, what does the term "voice" mean in your writing?

Freewrite for 5-10 minutes about these considerations.

The Process

For the rest of the class time, we'll be discussing (organizing, if you will) how writing fits into a particular series of events called The Writing Process.

Steps in the Process:

Invention

Formative Writing

Drafting

Review/Revision

Editing

Important ideas to remember:

Invention - There are no wrong ideas. This stage should be as inclusive as possible.

Formative Writing - This is an organizational stage. Outlining and Clustering, among other techniques, can help sort through the initial ideas and put them into the context of the assignment by focusing them toward particular goals.

Drafting - At this stage, you should be making a more coherent text out of your ideas, but you should also allow new ideas to occur, be willing to rearrange, and keep an open mind to the fluidity of your document. (Let's discuss Shitty First Drafts!)

Review/Revision - This stage should provide an opportunity to step back from your writing and gain perspective on what is working and what isn't. At this stage, clear goals should be set for keeping or eliminating content.

Editing - This is (finally) when you should adjust for sentence structure, grammar, syntax, etc. to create a polished piece of work. Remember that no text is ever truly finalized, but that by editing, we are shaping a text into a publishable state.

Collaboration - This can (and often should) occur at several stages in the writing process!